Match Reaction: Wasps 34 Sale Sharks 24

Wasps may have run out comfortable winners at home to Sale Sharks on Sunday but Dai Young insists there was still room for improvement for his side.

Rob Miller scored two tries in as many minutes to help Wasps back to winning ways, after a resilient Sharks side had earlier broken the deadlock.

AJ MacGinty opened the scoring with his boot, before a try from Danny Cipriani plus two from man-of-the-match Ashley Johnson swung the game back in the hosts’ favour, despite Bryn Evans dotting down for two of his own for Sale in the second half.

And while Wasps dominated for the most part of the game, Young insists it was not a perfect performance.

“We played really well in patches and we were sloppy in patches as well, so it was nowhere near an 80 minute performance,” he said.

“We were playing against a good team in fairness, a side who have consistently been top half of the table over the last couple of seasons.

“They are a very proud team, who are never going to go away, they go hammer and tongs in every area.

“Fair play to them, they never give up and even when we looked like we could change gears and move away, they kept within striking distance.

“You’ve got to give Sale a lot of credit. There was a lot of good stuff from us, but also a lot of stuff we can improve on as well.

“I thought our shape was pretty good, but some of our handling wasn’t the best. We created opportunities, but because our passing wasn’t quite slick enough the opportunities slipped us by.

“We were obviously a little disappointed with the amount of points that we let in second half. We didn’t control the game and we were giving up points too easily.”

Sale boss Steve Diamond admitted he thought his side were in for a hefty defeat when they faced a 24-point deficit with just 15 minutes left on the clock, but while they turned it round into a more respectable scoreline, he is keen to see big changes from his team’s performance.

“At one stage it looked like we’d concede a huge score but we did well to get back into it.

“Their first try was definitely controversial but fair play to Wasps, they did enough in the first half to put us away and Ashley Johnson is certainly a top-class player.

“A few of the players made too many errors, as they’ve been doing too frequently in recent games, and we need to eradicate them.”